First page from UK High Commissioner Terence Shone writing to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 14 October 1947

Transcript

19. We are, no doubt, still far too much embroiled in the storm of events to be able to view them in perspective or to give a full explanation of why they burst upon us with a force that has seemed almost overwhelming. I have suggested above that on the transfer of power to Indian hands, there was a sudden release of elemental feelings, and of emotions on which the effects of education, or semi-education, and the stimulus exerted for years past by revolutionary leaders cannot yet be gauged. The division of the Old India, which provided the basis for the transfer of power, although agreed to by the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh political leaders, was a grievous disappointment to all three parties. As between the two major communities, it ran counter, on the Hindu side, not only to the fundamental tenets of the Congress Party (let alone the Mahasabha and other political parties and organisations) that India must remain one, but also to a similar feeling in the inmost hearts of large masses of the population including, I should say, not a few Muslims, especially amongst those whose homes and interests are in what is now the Dominion of India. There have always been, and still are, Muslims, including leaders, in the Congress Party; so far as I know, there are no Hindus in the Muslim League. Compensations for Congress, at least, were that the Plan of June 3rd afforded means of getting rid of British rule at the earliest possible date and the hope of creating a strong central Government for what is now the Dominion of India. Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League, on the other only obtained a “truncated, moth-eaten Pakistan” which, however, if far different from the Pakistan of their dreams, they preferred to no Pakistan at all. The ever-deteriorating relations between the leaders of the Congress and the ...